This blog has been merged with The Dusty Cellar. All new content will appear there. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Get Followers...Get Comments!

I have a few suggestions for making it easier for people to visit your blog 
and let you know they stopped by.

I am writing this because I love to keep up with your blogs, 
but it does take quite a bit of time 
and I often get behind. 
So, it is sort of a selfish set of suggestions.

Comments:
First, do you require word verification 
for someone to leave a comment?
If you do, you will likely get less comments.
I confess, when I am crunched for time, 
I often skip leaving comments on blogs that require word verification. 
And if I do, and I make a mistake with the word verification, 
it is extremely unlikely that I will try again. 
So 'poof' there goes the beloved comment!
If you love comments, 
consider becoming comment friendly!

In blogger to adjust your word verification settings:
You need to do this for each of your blogs if you have more than one.

Dashboard>Settings>

Instead of using word verification to prevent spam, 
prevent anonymous users from commenting. 

Dashboard>Settings>




And I find the easiest way to leave a comment for someone
is with a pop up comment box.

Dashboard>Settings>



Readership
To increase readership of your blog, 
make it as easy as possible for people to follow your blog.
The Follow This Blog tool in blogger is lovely 
for people who refer to their blogger dashboard for updates.
But, you want to get your blog read, right?
So get it out there where anyone can follow it.

That means you want to provide 
a way for anyone to follow your blog. 
In blogger go to

Dashboard>Design>Add a gadget.

Add gadgets that provide following options:
Here are a few:
Followers
Follow by Email
Feed
Subscription Links

I can tell you I never miss a post by 
Wayne or Heather.
Why?
Because they make it EASY for me to follow them.
By using Networked Blogs, 
I easily follow them through my Facebook feed.
I use my facebook feed for everything. 
From local event feeds, restaurant feeds, 
photogroup feeds, etc, etc.
And if I can't add your blog to my feed, 
I will get behind, way behind!

You don't need to use facebook to let 
other people follow you via Facebook. 
Just set up a facebook page for your blog to update to - 
which is what Wayne does. 
The only thing on his FB page are blogger updates 
which go directly to my FB feed.

I would really like to follow your blog 
If you add the feed to your blog,
 please let me know! 

Here are some other suggestions for 
getting your blog read!